IFERI committee member, Gordon Askew, writes another posting via his informative blog 'ssphonix': http://ssphonix.blogspot.co.uk Enough time to talk about books? This morning The Bookseller reported that: More than half of primary school pupils in the UK don’t have enough time to talk about books in...

This is an excellent article by Dr Louisa C. Moats, member of IFERI's Advisory Group:


http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/ ... /Moats.pdf

How Spelling Supports Reading

And Why It Is More Regular and Predictable Than You May Think

By Louisa C. Moats

Researcher, Eva Marinus, kindly alerts us to a free app for adjusting spacing of text for slower readers with a transparent comment about the potential increase in efficiency: As described in the DSF news from SPELD, the spacing settings of Dyslexie font can be obtained for any font by adjusting the...

You can read up about the research behind the use of different fonts - style, size and spacing - here:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=4&t=445

Dyslexia-SPELD Western Australia has provided an e-leaflet with facts and information about font types for people who may struggle to read text easily:

http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=26 ... 5caea84e&e

Here is a leaflet about the Dyslexie font generated by the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation Western Australia: http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=262336c979e60dbacb6ca2299&id=8e5caea84e&e Should we use a special font for children with reading difficulties? The research concluded that the Dyslexie...

I think that teachers can increase children's vocabulary explicitly and teachers should aim to do so. One danger is that phonics provision can be pretty shallow if vocabulary development (teaching) is not included but just the technical practice tends to dominate. The impetus for the 'broad and bala...

Dick - that's really very interesting and gives much food for thought.

The National Reading Panel on conducting the national inquiry in America (2000) identified five essential elements of effective reading instruction, commonly known as the “Five Pillars”: 1) Phonemic Awareness 2) Phonics 3) Fluency 4) Vocabulary 5) Comprehension. With regard to vocabulary , whilst ch...

The following findings about vocabulary experience and growth by Hart and Risley (1999) are tremendously important for parents and for educators - this is a 'must read' for everyone concerned with literacy and education as it shows the difference the experience from birth to the three year old toddl...